Today Garland is one of the largest cities in Texas, a Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex city proud of its rail-town roots, its Blackland-prairie cotton heritage, and the downtown square where two rival towns became one. Its story runs from the Duck Creek settlement through the 1886 railroad rivalry, the 1887 compromise that named the town, and the cotton-and-rail decades that built it. Our Garland designs gather that identity into wearable form — the railroad, the prairie, the Lone Star. Garland, Texas — one town made from two, since 1887.
The first settlement here was Duck Creek, a Peters Colony community on the creek that still runs through the city, with a post office by the 1850s. Then the railroads came. In 1886 the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe and the Missouri, Kansas & Texas — the Katy — both bypassed old Duck Creek and built depots about a mile apart, and two rival towns sprang up beside them: Embree on the Santa Fe line, and a new Duck Creek on the Katy. The two fought hard — over the post office, over incorporation, over which would swallow the other. In 1887 Congressman Joseph Abbott settled it by moving the post office to neutral ground between the depots, and the new town took the name Garland, for U.S. Attorney General Augustus H. Garland. Garland incorporated in 1891.
Why People Visit Garland Texas
- Stroll the historic downtown square and the restored Plaza Theatre (1941).
- Get out on Lake Ray Hubbard for boating, sailing, and shoreline parks.
- Walk the old-growth bottomland of Spring Creek Forest Preserve.
- Ride the wooded singletrack at Rowlett Creek Preserve.
- Shop and gather at Firewheel Town Center and the downtown events on the square.
